Everything That Rises Must Converge

Every time I think I am close to stringing a few thoughts together, I get distracted and thoughts go unstrung. This is similar, but not the same as being at loose ends.  I keep being on the verge of cleaning up my room, on the cusp of beginning a big project, but I see now, as I have seen many a time, that anything big takes big effort, and I am better at little efforts.  Hence this blog has become neglected and short shrifted.  The day by day drama of my life is playing out over in blipfoto, where I have faithfully posted a picture a day, plus words, for more than a year.  See http://www.blipfoto.com/grazingllama for those daily ruminations.  But here are supposed to be the big pithier stuff, which seems in short supply. 

The report goes something like this.  Still unemployed.  Do not mind at all.  Looking for work.  It all looks good.  In the meantime, I have discovered almost all jobs create illusions of importance which keep your attention for hoursdaysyearsanddecades, and then when it is over, it is as if it never was.   True of life in general, but at least you get to pick each action item of your nonwork.  I am just amazed by how a whole career is irrelevant as soon as I leave it. 

But never mind.  In the meantime, there is just one distracting day after another, which I have no trouble filling with little nodes of pleasure.  A little eating, then exercise, then music, and gardening and cleaning and art and some job hunting and reading and oh dear it is time to plan dinner and shop and cook and then it is all over until tomorrow.

I embrace work as my feminist right to earn my own living, but after thirty years of this, I have started to see how much of life is lost at work, and question whether we have a decent balance in this country between what we do for money and what we do for love.  Until the money runs out, I'm living it up! 

What's That Word?

It has been two weeks since I have gone  to work.  Two weeks without the requirement of plugging my brain into a computer and participating in the interchange between electrons in a machine and in my head.  When we examine the life of the office worker, the world looks more and more like The Matrix.

There is a transition going on, but it is subtle.  Note I am again connected to these machine electrons.  However, I am one step away from buying a datebook made of paper.  And a few more steps away from returning this box to the status of tool, rather than companion. 

There ought to be a word for the condition I'm in.  The only words I know - retirement and unemployment- reflect the poles of experience.  Retirement is for those who have declared the end to wage earning and planted the flag in the country of leisure.  Unemployment states an absence, perhaps a perilous one.  I don't feel leisurely or financially imperiled.  I do have an urgency about time.  Employment answers the question of what will I do today.  Without that mandate, the whole world is available, crying out for attention.

What will I do today?  Without a plan, the questions keep me up at night.  Yet, I don't have a sense of how I would choose, even if I were to force myself to make a list in order to prioritize.  There are things I do to soothe the anxiety:  Swim laps, clean the kitchen, play music.  These have always been diversions from the harder work that needs more thought or creativity.  But the bigger questions are how do I make a difference, how do I create beauty, and how do I engage in relationships?  Harder still, how to have a balance of all of it?

A job has always narrowed the available time to almost nothing, thereby vitiating the question.   Now, the questions loom large and real.  There isn't much time left.  What to do?

Wait.  The sun is out.  Gotta go!

Finally, Unemployed

I wanted to write something in March, just to say I had been here at least monthly.  Yesterday was my last official work day, although I already had my office, computer and phone taken away, so I didn't go anywhere, just poked around on email, forwarding some last tasks to others.  Today,  meeting new people at my treeplanting activities with Friends of Trees,  I found folks sympathetic, as everyone has been unemployed at some point.  It is like being pregnant, inspiring complete strangers to tell their similar stories.  Of course, I have to be careful not to milk it too much.

Tomorrow I plan to start a number of lists of things to do between now and whenever.  I feel I might get a job too soon, before I have used this moment to assess what I really want.  Already I feel the weight of the endless grind of the work week lifting, as I see that Sunday isn't the end of the weekend, just the beginning of a new week.  My biggest fear is the loss of companionship from not seeing my office mates each day.  I will have to find a way to have regular interaction with others.  For the first time, I realize the purpose of coffee shops.  I'm hoping there will be more words here.

Travelling Cheese

"Who Moved My Cheese" was published in 1998 and at the timewas considered a brilliant tool for coping with change.  You don't hear much about that book anymore, but I need to order it from the library, to make sure it doesn't have a secret I can use.  Ever since being told I was losing my job, I have been in a state of disbelief and controlled euphoria.  I really could use a change.  Maybe not one that takes away all my money, but if that is the one that is given to me, I should make the most of it.  Instead, people keep worrying about health insurance for me.  "What about it?" I ask grumpily, "I'm not sick, have never been sick, why must I assume the worst?"  For some reason, this aspect of unemployment really irritates me.  Should I really devote time and worry time, over whether I might get sick and be forced to pay for, or even worse not be able to pay for, feeling awful, suffering and dying?  Is physical pain and suffering less painful if you are insured? 

Regardless of the stupid health care dilemma, which I blame 100% on the Republican party, I do suffer from the retrospective of my life that is playing in all the cinemas of my mind.   When facing a big change, suddenly everything that came before this moment threatens to coalesce into a big fat evaluation of my life.  "So this is where you end up, thirty years out of law school? One lousy job, where you made lousy money,  after hundreds of poor people pass through your door, just as poor going in as coming out, and then they fire you." 

But the actual truth is that I don't feel that bad.  Sure I'll miss the swimming pool in the town where I work, and I'll miss my co-workers, with their cameraderie  as we face an impossible task each day: how to make a difference.  It must be like fighting the war in Afghanistan, only without the possibility of being blown up by a bomb.   However, after the shock of not going to work wears off, I think I will be able to adjust.  At the very least, there will be the job search to structure my days. Then there will be the entire of book of other stuff I have always wanted to do, but never gave myself the time to do.  If it turns out that that my many hobbies and interests cannot sustain me and unemployment and savings run out, then I will need to find a job, any job.  Until then, I will allow myself to just be.

The Sky is Falling

It has been more than a month since my last post.  In the meantime, my mundane world has altered.  Although the details are important to me, the fact is, only change is interesting and meaningful, stasis is about nothing.  So why do we so resist change?  Why, even when someone forces upon us the very change we seek, do we recoil against it?

These are the questions I have asked repeatedly, since I was told that my job of the last 29 years is about to be eliminated.   It happened suddenly and nonsensically, surprising and angering.  And even though my job has many positives, it has also been very frustrating and repetitive over the years.  Yet fear of the unknown has kept me here, year after year.

So now I am thrust into the next phase of my life, and yet, I cannot help but grasp at the straws of remaining the same.  There is a chance the downsize may happen some different way, so I focus on that possibility for awhile longer.  There is a chance a different position may be offered, so I hope for that.  However, the better part of me knows I should move over into the new realm of "Life After Legal Aid," and leave the what-ifs behind.  I think I had to write this to make my way over here.

So much of my job is about helping people find palatable solutions to serious problems.  Usually I assist them in getting to the next phase of their lives, and they thank me.  Why then, have I learned so little about making transitions in my own life?  I guess I will try and become my own client for the change that will come.  Here we go.

Thoughts Over A Bowl A Polenta

This post starts with nothing in mind whatsoever.  Can I make something out of nothing? 

This week has been spent alone, not counting going to work and a music rehearsal.  By which I mean, my partner, Robert, has been off to the coast pursuing his livelihood and I have been left in the house by myself.  This happens so rarely, that I am both euphoric and at loose ends.  Euphoria has been expressed through the unrestrained oddity of my diet.  Finally, I get to eat anything I want.  Which means I simply scrounge for whatever is there, no matter how various.  Tonight, I made pudding with half, half-and-half, and half, rice milk.  It was weird but I couldn't tell if it was the rice milk or the fact that I burned the bottom of the pan.  Of course, I ate some anyway.  My food goal is to prove that I can eat happily on whatever the cupboard and fridge provide.  Like most Americans, we tend to stockpile food., even though we are always going to the grocery store.  The other part of dinner was polenta, to use up the carton of chicken stock I opened for my quinoa vegetable stew two nights before, that included every vegetable in the fridge except the lettuce.  I call it practicing for poverty.

If I get nothing else out of my career of taking care of the legal problems of the poor,  at least I have a clue how to survive on the bottom rungs of society, should I ever fall down the pinnacle of success I have managed to achieve.  I also know not to fear such a fall from grace, as I have learned that only addiction or mental illness or illegality of status could send you to the streets. Despite the tales of woe that are touted as proof of our terrible economy, our country is not yet at the point of letting people starve or freeze to death.  I say this only to remember that our version of misfortune is quite a bit better than many parts of the world.

The one thing that marks my poor clients as different from my friends and acquaintances, is the raw emotion they readily express.  Although I thrill to the slogan of the "Occupy" movement that "We are the 99%,"  there is a big difference between the bottom 10%  and the 90th percentile.   The thing about this country is that we have a good idea of how the rich live, and we are damn mad we don't have some of that.  The poorer you are, the madder and sadder you are about it.  So I hear a lot of emotions and I like that part of my job.  This may be a twisted appreciation, but I admire those who are in touch with and express their feelings.  It is so straightforward.  But I'm also glad that I don't have all those strong feelings myself, at least not over the same things. 

Spending the week alone has also led to more talking to myself, which then finally, has led to this little bit of writing, which is all good.   But I'm ready for company

(Random photos from today)

Everywhere Looks Good From Here

Whenever I go out in the country I imagine how nice it would be to live there.  I stare intently at the landscape and wish I could look at the view from the window of a house right here, or over there.  This leads to  perpetual house hunting of the vaguest nature.  I am lucky to have a friend who is a realtor and  tolerates my temporary enthusiasms, because inevitably when she talks about getting pre-approved for a loan, or checking with the planning department about whether there are building restrictions, my dream house starts looking less like heaven on earth and more like a series of decisions that depend on comparing facts and figures.  Then my interest wanes until the next trip out of town.

It has been suggested that my behavior means that I don't want to live in the city and I am desperate to relocate anywhere that doesn't involve so many sidewalks, stoplights and coffee shops.  But I actually like the busy metropolis with all the possibilities for amusement.  It's just that when I see real land stripped and bare of human accoutrements, I just want to lie down and be absorbed into the scenery.   I think I sang 'This Land Is Your Land" one too many times as a child.

Luckily, we do find ways to get out where nature predominates.  Last weekend we went hiking along Siouxon Creek in Washington, about sixty miles from Portland.  The forest was covered with thick moss and popping mushrooms everywhere, and it embodied everything the northwest climate is famous for.  I looked at that moss and wanted to bed down in its softness.  What a place this earth is!

 
Here's a poem I wrote about this place, more than ten years ago.  Luckily, it hasn't changed.

Siouxon Creek

Down in hemlock, cedar, fern
everything is green, even air is algal,
the creek a punch of moss
champagne and liquor of leaf.
Mist swags treetops, a wreath of droplets
glazing needles, dripping into
effervescing waterfalls.
Tall snags carve totem poles
to gods of decay, before toppling
into bryophytic carpet.

I drive a gauntlet of clearcuts and hunters
to get here, and grumble over mountain
bike prints I tamp down on the trail,
but bathed in emerald light
discontent spills away,
within this narrow watershed of life.